this landscape lies as if across the bed in an upstairs
room in farmhouse, flat, in places, like the tone
produced by a six-year-old learning the trombone
yet there is a sense of curvature, suggestive of a hill
or at least some small undulation, an interruption
in the agricultural order, trees too, punctuate
the fiery fields, roses perhaps, paprika, chillis
something with a kick among the paler pastures
peonies perhaps, salt, icicles something with
its eyes on the wider universe, calm and still
as if looking down from the wing of a biplane high
in a cornflower sky, just hanging as if about to fall
down into a patchwork quilt, warm and practical
now spread before us, albeit quite bright and vertical